The term "train up" reminds me of the term "tune up" on NYPD BLUE. A "tune up" was when one of the NYPD detectives, usually Andy Sipowicz, would take a perp behind closed doors and beat him until he confessed to committing a crime. Of course, as NYPD fans knew, Sipowicz administered these beatings only out of love. It wasn't like he had any personal issues to deal with.

One can't help but think that if the perp had been "trained up" with corporal punishment, he wouldn't be in the jailhouse enduring the wrath of Lt. Sipowicz.

With apologies to that "redneck" comedian from several years ago:

If you can hear about children being massacred by U.S. Marines and say, "Well, you know, there ARE two sides to every story . . ." then you just might be a sociopath.

Star Jones is one classy lady, in my view (pun intended). She could have played the race card, but she chose not to. Don't worry, Star! What goes around, comes around, Girlfriend. I've got a feeling that there's something huuuuuuge waiting for you, just around the corner!

But that begs the question: How long can those of us who are faithful "viewers" continue to remain faithful to a show that fired its African-American Star, and replaced her with a white woman?

Since its inception, "The View" has done more to raise the consciousness of American women than any other media program. Which is why it's such a shame to see it end so badly for SJ. Although the effect was unintentional, I'm sure, this sordid event has only served to reinforce the vicious stereotype that says that women can't trust each other.

What a shame.

It's certainly true that, as literary works are passed down from generation to generation, modifications to the original texts, and even to the original titles, are inevitable.

For example, by the time my mid-1970s high school English lit class encountered "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" by Homer, those two great epics of antiquity had come to be known as "The Idiot" and "The Oddity" by "Homo."

G.K. sez: "Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on either side, so if the president turns out to be a shallow jingoistic fool with a small rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on."

I keep imagining Europeans thinking: "What is UP with the U.S.? Even cavemen eventually figured out that you don't shit where you eat!"

4 years in the U.S. Senate equates to how many years as governor of Arkansas?

Henry Kissinger said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

Power is also the ultimate hallucinogen.

It's so hilarious to watch these fat, ugly, stupid, pathetic, delusional white men freakin'.

Here is how the "familial" connection between Gore Vidal and Jackie Kennedy Onassis works:

Gore's mother and Jackie's mother had been married to the same rich guy (at different times, of course). So, said rich guy was the stepfather of both Gore and Jackie (at different times, of course).

That's quite a coincidence, but it's also a matter of public record, so it can't be refuted by jealous literary critics.

It's a rare generation that hasn't sent its children to their deaths in a war. I don't say "meaningless" war, because all war is meaningless. War only has meaning in the context of the relationships between fathers and sons.

A generation of fathers becomes fearful that their sons don't take them seriously. So the fathers start a war, because there's nothing more serious than a war. And after all, their own fathers fought in wars that their fathers started, and on and on.

Sons love their fathers, and want to trust them, so they go off to fight and die in their fathers' wars, unable to accept the fact that their fathers love John Wayne more than they love their own sons.

Wasn't there, at one time, a programming language named "Natural"? Talk about a misnomer!

Until somebody can develop a programming algorithm that generates metaphors, all computer languages will be artificial, "unnatural" devices that are poor imitations of human language.

Alan Watts, the great Buddhist scholar and philosopher, once said, "Nature never makes an aesthetic mistake."

There's your algorithm, guys. You can have the rest of the day off.

SR's point is well-taken, and I would only add that 2008 will mark the second time within 10 years that Rudy doesn't even make it to the primary, and then has to sit on the sidelines and watch Hillary walk off with the office he wanted (or said he wanted).

BTW, as much as I've enjoyed GK's Woebegon screeds over the years, I think I like his stuff even more when he writes about politics.

This country didn't deserve a leader as good as Al Gore in 2000, and we certainly don't now. Just as my people had to wander around in the wilderness for 40 years before we got to go to the Promised Land, it will take at least that long before America is deserving of such leadership again.

The last thing I read by Sedaris was a piece he wrote for The New Yorker wherein he claimed that, although he had begun his college career majoring in Patricide, when his mother found out she became so jealous that he felt compelled to declare a double major--in Patricide AND Matricide.

I'll bet the fact checkers at The New Yorker had a field day with that one!

When Pinnochio lied, his nose got longer.

When McCain lies, that lump in his cheek gets bigger.

Once a war is started, nobody can stop it. Even if Bush withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq tomorrow, the war that he started there would continue on without U.S. involvement for years and years.

I can't stand to see or hear anyone discuss the wars Bush started in Afghanistan and Iraq as anything other than what they truly are: insane acts instigated by a group of insane clowns.